May 12, 2007

Well, "adventure" is too strong a word but here is how my life is going. Much insipid banality below the fold...

I survived exams and am now roughly 2 years from graduation give or take a summer. Here's a quick overview of what's been up with me....

First, I'm no longer taking any classes this summer.

Instead, I'm working double shifts at UPS to fill in for the many vacations, make extra money and get my savings account back up.

On the Coast Guard front, I'm taking an extra week of drills after my two weeks of active duty. This should help me get most of the qualifications for my foreign vessel inspection certification. I'm still over the weight limits but I've again lost so much weight that I'm being retained. (whew!) I'm down from being over the body-fat limit by 4% to being only 1% over. I'd actually gained a small bit of weight but had lost just over 3 inches from my waist since January. This is better news than straight up weight loss as it means (in theory) that I'm gaining muscle. For those who are new to the blog...and for some reason give a rats ass about this...I put on about 70 pounds after knee surgery for a training accident some years ago...since then I lost about half of that but I've been rollercoastering between 265 and 278 for months...I'm only 73 inches tall (and don't measure quite that much with my hip out of joint right now) so I'm actually an official fatass. My progress is actually good but after literally years of this I've got to get it under control.

Thus, there is also a non-monetary reason for no classes this summer....as I've discovered that while taking a heavy course load at school is not the time to quit sodas 'n mochas cold turkey. I've also foisted the paperwork aspects of my job with someone else and am working in much more physical positions...(at no loss in pay...WOOT!)

The mobile home is in a partially disassembled state and quite depressing internally, but livable, I fixed the heater and AC last December and have replaced the blown out wall sockets from the lightning strike.

I was at the guest room at my folks house an embarrassingly large percentage of the past semester, in part because it is much closer to both school and the Coast Guard, and because I needed to house/cat/bird sit for them several times for several weeks on end. This is convenient but embarrassing and infuriating when I'm paying rent, utilities and property taxes on my own place.....but of course, the city of Newport News initially failing to properly reconnect my trailer after water main repairs was a further complication. (Heh, It took me a week to figure out that the repairs were finished and I should have water....and that I hadn't stripped out the water on/off valve). I'm now going from work to finishing the internal repairs instead of to school. I hope to FINALLY be done with that in a week or two. (I'll have a rug again...and a usable laundry room!)

The failure of my tuition assistance or GI Bill to materialize as well as a few grand in medical bills was an object lesson in how close to the gutter I still was.

I still owe the school money, but aside from 1 medical bill, and utilities and rent, I'm again out of debt....which looked pretty distant in February when all this hit. If things go well over the next two months I'm going to start putting all of my reserve pay in investments split between my 401K, maxing the CG thrift plan and likely some undecided investment plan.

Which brings me to the coolest haiku EVER!

“Miracle”

Of all life’s wonders

Einstein marveled most of all

At compound interest.

That's by Colleen Doran who's blog you really should read. (but not if you're looking for more haiku)

Health wise my blood pressure is good, and my knee has gone a year without any relapses from the surgery. As I mentioned my hip is slightly, albeit painfully out of whack, but I'll get that fixed when I start going to the chiropractor next month. In fact, I'm planning to go back to taking aikido fall.

All in all I'm exactly where any 21 year old should be....the fact that I'm 37 is a data-point I'm not going to dwell on at the moment.

Long term, I still plan to teach/tutor/translate in Japan in about 2 years, beyond that I've several irons in the fire. I'm still hopeful of being able to move to one of the Pacific overseas territories by '12.

Things really are looking up though. Aside from the injuries, the vast majority of my problems over the last few years were self inflicted. So the justification for griping is pretty much nil.

The fact that by biggest complaint is my weight, is, ultimately, the definition of perspective, especially given what some people are having to deal with in this day and age.

4
Taking on 35kg was quite a bit, I'm sorry to say. I had a knee surgery for a torn ACL reconstruction and had to drop martial arts, but I only got maybe a couple of kilos (to ten pounds maybe). But I wasn't bedridden after a couple of days, so maybe that's the difference.

I'm surprised that CG measures weight and fat content, that's really odd. One would imagine them measuring how many pull-ups and push-ups you can do, your time to 2 mile run and things of that nature. Sounds like bureaucracy metastasing. But I suppose there's no point in complaining, it's just what it is.

5
Hurricane Isabel hit 2 days after surgery, there was no therapy...no power....no running water for over a month. Aside from 1 foray to the physical therapy facility....which turned out to be non functional...a slight detour on the way back to check on a friends house and 1 trip to another friends house to get his emergency generator started (it was an emergency...his mom was on oxygen) I was pretty much a vegetable while on my 30 days of medical leave. I was not permitted to excersize beyond physical therapy for several months after that.

Most of my many problems are self inflicted but the complications and unusually long recovery time from what should have been a simple ACL transplant was due to circumstances.

I'm also a natural fattass to begin with, I was well over 320 pounds at one point in the early/mid 90s.